"He is entering the shuttlecraft Cook. Launch sequence in progress ... opening shuttlebay doors."
"On screen." Riker stepped back to see the hurried launch on the viewscreen. For the second time that day, he watched a small ship soar from the belly of the Enterprise, looking like a bat escaping from a cave into the dead of night.
"Five hundred kilometers, six hundred kilometers, seven hundred kilometers-" droned the ops officer.
"Good luck, Data," muttered Riker. "Conn, prepare to go to maximum warp. Engage."
In a halo of golden light, the sleek starship elongated into the sparkling starscape and vanished. Thousands of kilometers away, a tiny shuttlecraft veered toward a medium-large planet engulfed in noxious ivory gases.
Ro Laren paced across the tastefully illuminated but cramped bridge of the Orb of Peace, thinking their return to Carda.s.sian s.p.a.ce had been too easy, too uneventful. Unless a big operation was afoot and most of the Dominion ships were occupied, they should have been hailed or intercepted by now. After all, they were making a straight shot across a war zone toward one of the Dominion"s most sensitive areas.
"No sign of any ships?" she asked Picard, who was still seated at the conn. In their agreed-upon chain of command, she was captain of the ship, and he was in command of the mission. For a veteran officer, the captain had been remarkably calm about taking a subordinate role to her own. Perhaps a real captain didn"t need to have a special chair, extra pips on his collar, and everyone saluting him. Captain Picard"s bearing and dignity were enough to warrant the respect of anyone in his presence.
He shook his head. "There is traffic in several solar systems along our route, but no one seems overly interested in us."
"It"s too easy," said Ro with concern. "We"re being watched, evaluated-I can feel it. By the time they come after us, it will be too late; they will have made up their minds."
Picard tugged on his earring, a tic he was beginning to develop.
"Then let"s alter our course," Picard suggested. "Pick a typical solar system that is inhabited, go there and look like we"re doing some trading."
"That will throw us off our timetable," said the ops officer.
"Getting killed will throw us off even more," replied Ro, glowering at the man.
Picard nodded to his officer. "Find us a likely planet. Quickly."
"We have goods to trade, don"t we?" asked Ro.
"Yes," answered the captain. "We replicated a supply of zajerberry wine, Bajoran silk, and tetralubisol. Plus, we have a box of Bajoran religious tracts."
"If we survive this, maybe I"ll read them," muttered Ro.
"Won"t it look odd for us to be trading with a Carda.s.sian colony?" asked the ops officer.
"I wouldn"t be terribly concerned about that," answered Picard. "According to Starfleet Intelligence, the Carda.s.sians developed quite a taste for Bajoran goods during the occupation, and Bajor is still trying to rebuild its economy. Under the circ.u.mstances it will just look like a wise business decision."
Behind her, the ops officer sighed loudly, not happy with his options. "There"s a Carda.s.sian farming colony on the sixth planet of System H-949."
"All right then. Set course for it and make our way slowly, at warp one," ordered Ro. "I want them to see that we"ve changed course."
Since Picard was stationed at the conn, it was his decision whether to obey the order, and everyone on the bridge was watching him. Without hesitation, he punched in the new coordinates. "New course entered. We"d better come out of warp to change course."
There was a slight tremor in the primitive craft as it slowed and made an awkward course correction. Then the warp engines revved once more, and the transport shot into s.p.a.ce, headed toward an obscure Carda.s.sian colony.
Ro sighed, not certain whether her relief was over the course change or the fact that the fake Bajorans had obeyed her order. Her authority over this crew extended solely from Captain Picard, and no one else. Without his faith in her, she was nothing but a grubby refugee to this crew of young upstarts. They were brave and eager to face the enemy, while she was jumpy and cautious. In Carda.s.sian s.p.a.ce, surrounded by the enemy, she much preferred her collection of well-earned fears to their naq vete.
"They"re here," said Picard grimly as he studied his screen. "Two warships are now in pursuit of us. One Jem"Hadar and one Carda.s.sian."
"I knew they were watching. Maintain course and speed." Ro turned to face the crew. "We have to confront them and prove who we are-to get them off our tracks. Had we waited too long, heading directly for the Badlands, they would"ve decided on their own that we were spies. How much time do we have?"
"Eleven minutes until interception," said the ops officer, a trace of fear in his formerly condescending voice.
"When they hail us," said Ro, "be friendly and do whatever they ask. Remember, the Carda.s.sians treat their riding hounds better than they treat Bajorans. We"re awfully lucky that we got a Jem"Hadar ship in the mix."
"We usually don"t feel that way," said Picard with a wan smile.
Ro tapped her Bajoran comm badge and spoke in a loud voice. "Captain Ro to the ship"s complement: all off-duty personnel are to go immediately to the cargo bay and unpack the zajerberry wine. Put out samples of all the cargo. Arrange it nicely, as if it"s always on display. Bridge out."
"Shall we go on yellow alert?" asked the ops officer uncertainly.
"No, don"t do anything that looks even remotely aggressive. We"ll either talk our way out of this or die here and now."
The lanky Bajoran gazed at Picard. "I notice that one of the "improvements" you made to my ship was to add a self-destruct sequence. Feel free to ready it. I, for one, don"t want to be tortured. How about you?"
The captain cleared his throat and returned her gaze. "I"ll bring it up on my console, keeping it in the background. I won"t move from this station. If capture looks imminent, I"ll arm it with a ten-second delay."
Ro nodded. "We always did think alike."
"We"re being hailed," said tactical.
"On screen." Ro turned to look at the viewscreen framed with plat.i.tudes, and fear clamped her spine. Instead of the spiny Jem"Hadar face she had hoped to see, a bony, scaly Carda.s.sian face stared at her. He smiled with the delight of a s.a.d.i.s.tic schoolmaster having caught a tardy student.
"And what have we here?" he said snidely. "Bajorans in the Carda.s.sian Union? Roaming freely?"
"Good day to you, n.o.ble captain," replied Ro in as obsequious a tone as she could manage. "We are no longer enemies-we are practically allies, thanks to the benevolence of the Dominion."
That wiped the smirk off the Carda.s.sian"s face. "Come to a full stop and prepare to be boarded."
"We would welcome that," said Ro brightly, "as we are looking for the opportunity to trade with your people."
"What do you have that we could possibly want?" asked the Carda.s.sian doubtfully.
"Zajerberry wine," answered Ro slyly. She knew that Picard"s comments had been on the mark. The Carda.s.sians had developed a taste for the stuff while they occupied Bajor. She had once smuggled some out of Quark"s place on Deep s.p.a.ce Nine to buy the release of Maquis prisoners.
"Prepare to be boarded." The Carda.s.sian scowled, and the screen went blank.
With movements that were so fast they could not be fully appreciated by a human eye, Data scurried around his type-9 personnel shuttlecraft, the Cook. He quickly filled two shielded cases with tricorders, weapons, tools, a distress beacon, and emergency supplies, leaving food and water behind. The android took a final glance at his console and confirmed that one of the Jem"Hadar battle cruisers had indeed broken off from the others and gone into orbit around Kreel VI, the uninhabited planet on which he had taken refuge.
If Data didn"t want his shuttlecraft to be detected and destroyed, he had to shut down all systems. Plus, he knew it would be prudent to run some distance from the shuttlecraft in case the Jem"Hadar sent down a probe and discovered it. Fortunately, a scan of the planet for life signs would not reveal his existence. Unfortunately, after he turned off all systems, he would be unable to track the Orb of Peace. After the danger pa.s.sed, he would have to depend upon the transport"s last known position and scan from there. It would be highly imprecise.
Experiencing a sense of urgency, Data powered down the shuttlecraft. After a brief pause, the interior of the small vessel was plunged into total darkness. Data could sense his surroundings perfectly well as he opened the hatch manually, something which would have required two humans to accomplish in the heavy gravity of Kreel VI.
Monstrous winds and sleeting methane snow pelted Data as he darted outside, carrying a large case in each hand. His feet crunched on the frozen tundra, and he didn"t even want to think about how cold it was. Data set down the cases long enough to shut the door; then he surveyed his surroundings.
Visibility was almost zero in the blizzard, and Data relied upon his built-in sensors to locate an outcropping of rocks about three kilometers away. As the only landmark in the area, it would have to serve as his destination.
At a fast jog, leaping over fissures, he crossed the uneven ground, conscious of the opaque ice beneath his feet. The very fact that the Jem"Hadar had stopped to look for him on this inhospitable planet proved that their technology was quite advanced. They were thorough and determined-a dangerous adversary. Although the Jem"Hadar were biological beings, Data felt some kinship with them. Like himself, they had been engineered to serve without question in a mult.i.tude of situations, and they did so without complaint or selfish motives.
He heard a wrenching explosion somewhere behind him, and a sheet of methane blasted his back. A human would have been pitched off his feet by the impact of the shock wave, but Data just kept loping across the uneven terrain, hardly able to see his own legs in the driving snow. He suddenly detected high readings of radiation, enough to kill most creatures.
With his emotion chip turned off, the android felt no fear, but he spent a microsecond deciding that he was in serious trouble. His shuttlecraft probably destroyed, his shipmates scattered in different directions, he was all alone, except for an enemy cruiser with a complement of several hundred Jem"Hadar. If the Enterprise was destroyed, n.o.body in the universe would know where he was, even if he did manage to survive this incident.
Data"s most unsettling conclusion, however, was that his mission had already failed. If the shuttlecraft was destroyed, he could not track the Orb of Peace, nor could he catch their distress beacon when they released it. They were also on their own.
His legs began to pump uphill through ice and rubble, and Data realized that he had reached his destination. The rocky tor offered scant shelter, but it stood forty meters tall and might disguise his ma.s.s and metallic components from their sensors.
As there was nothing to see, Data didn"t bother to look for a vantage point. He set his cases down at the first level ground he came to, then crouched between them, ready to use them for shields. The tor seemed to consist of bedrock, which was some consolation to the android, because it might withstand an attack. Data waited, watching for the Jem"Hadar to emerge from the dense clouds and snow that swirled all around him.
A dabo-girl smile plastered to her face, Ro Laren stood by in the cargo bay, which had been hastily converted into a showroom. She watched half a dozen Carda.s.sians paw her merchandise and shove her crew around, while another half a dozen trained their weapons on the helpless Bajorans. A gray-haired gul named Ditok had beamed down with the inspection team, and he rifled through the silks, then moved on to the red-clay bottles of wine.
"An excellent vintage," chirped Ro. "Would you like to try some?"
He glared at her. "You have the impertinence to think that I would drink while on duty. Or that I would even like this Bajoran urine?"
His men chuckled politely, while Gul Ditok grabbed a bottle and hefted it. "Probably replicated, if it isn"t totally fake."
"I can verify its authenticity," promised Ro, "although the truth is in the tasting." She hoped the Starfleet replicators had been up to the task-some Carda.s.sians were experts on zajerberry wine.
"Doesn"t matter," snarled the gul, "you have a bigger problem, no doc.u.ments."
Ro offered him a smile of regret. "As I have told you, we have just entered this sector, and we were about to make our first stop, where we could apply for permission. We welcome your visit."
The gul scowled, as if he much preferred Bajorans who made trouble. "Is this what your proud people are reduced to, slinking around with trinkets, like a tribe of Ferengi?"
Ro lowered her voice. "To be frank, we are curious to get to know the Dominion better. We are neutral in this war, you know, and it"s fairly clear how it"s going to end."
The gul laughed. "Ah. So now you"re cowards, but at least smart cowards."
A young glinn hovering nearby whispered something in the ear of the gul, and he glowered at them. "I"m reminded that your flight pattern shows you came from Federation s.p.a.ce, or what"s left of it. How do you explain that?"
"We did come from Federation s.p.a.ce," answered Ro. "We were trading there first. In fact, that"s where we obtained the tetralubisol. It"s the finest s.p.a.ce-rated lubricant you can buy."
"I know what it is," muttered the Carda.s.sian.
One of the young pseudo-Bajorans approached the gul with a pamphlet in her hand. "Would you like something to read? It"s very inspiring."
He slapped the padd out of her hand. "Get away from me! You"re all sheep, the lot of you. Bajorans!" He spat on the deck.
Despite the burning bile surging up her throat, Ro stuck to her plan. "We honestly come in peace. With the Dominion rolling over two quadrants, we haven"t got anything to gain by remaining loyal to the Federation. The Federation did nothing but interfere, anyway."
"There"s a grain of truth," said the Carda.s.sian. "Have you got any more truth in you?"
"Only that you once fought against the Dominion, and now you regard them as allies. Can"t you do the same with us?"
For a moment, it looked as if the old warrior would accept her entreaty of peace; then he burst out laughing. "Bajorans, my dear, are hardly the Dominion."
His sunken eyes ran down her lean body. "You personally are quite attractive, Captain, and perhaps you do offer something of worth. We must have a private conference later to discuss it."
Ro gritted her teeth and tried not to vomit. "Then I could offer you some wine."
"I"m afraid not," he said with a sympathetic smile. "We have to confiscate all of the wine. Contraband, you know."
"What? What!" sputtered Ro, although she had expected this turn of events. "You can"t take our whole cargo ... I mean, we need to make a profit!"
"Experience is always a great profit." Gul Ditok snapped his fingers, and his soldiers roughly herded the Bajoran crew away from the cases of wine. Within seconds, they had transported every bottle from the cargo bay to their warship.
Ro tried to feign a mixture of indignation and horror at this outrage, while she was secretly relieved that they had accepted the bribe. Could she possibly hope they would leave it at that?
"Now are you satisfied? Can you let us go?" she demanded.
"Not yet. I want to see your bridge and your weaponry. Our scan suggests that you have photon torpedoes."
"Only six," said Ro. "You never know when you"ll confront an asteroid belt, pirates, or some other obstacle that requires intervention."
"We don"t have pirates in the Carda.s.sian Union," said the gul testily.
"Ah, but we were just in Federation s.p.a.ce, where they have no respect for law and order."
Once again, the gul looked disappointed that his prey was so amenable. "Take us to your bridge."
Gritting her teeth, Ro led the way to the bridge, which was only up one level via a spiral staircase. When she entered the control room, she was glad to see that the lights were dimmed to a soothing level. Captain Picard and two other duty officers were the only ones present.
The Carda.s.sian gul and his entourage muscled their way into the cramped room and began peering at everything and everyone. Captain Picard stood immediately and smiled at the visitors.
The gul looked at his conn screen. "What is your maximum speed?"
"Warp three," answered Picard.
The Carda.s.sian laughed. "Aren"t you embarra.s.sed to be flying this thing?"
"It"s preferable to fighting in the war," said Picard with a shrug. "We have a message of peace to bring to the Dominion."
"We shall see about that." The gul gave a sidelong glance at his retinue, and they grinned knowingly.
"Gul Ditok!" snapped a voice. "Look what I have found."
They all turned to see a female glinn standing beside an open cabinet, holding a Starfleet hand phaser. It was a shock to Ro and everyone else in the crew, as they had been careful not to bring any obvious Starfleet equipment on board. All of their phasers were Bajoran or Ferengi.
"Aha!" declared the Carda.s.sian. He was so melodramatic about it that Ro instantly knew what had happened-the phaser had been planted!
"You are enemies of the Dominion, in league with the Federation," proclaimed the gul. "We are seizing this vessel and taking you prisoner."